Stunning, surreal: Unbeaten Miami Dolphins shatter records in 70-20 home rout of Denver | Opinion
Thirty-five points scored ... in the first half. And a record 70 in the game. Tua Tagovailoa starting the game 17 for 17. Tyreek Hill’s 122 receiving yards before halftime, and the running backs averaging 8.1 yards per carry. The opponent starting a drive at Miami’s 33 — and having to punt. Andrew Van Ginkel, long blond surfer’s hair flowing, returning a fumble 29 yards to set up an easy touchdown.
Wait. How about rookie running back De’Von Achane rushing for 203 yards and leaving vapor trails with his speed? Or Raheem Mostert’s three TDs on the ground and four in all?
The Dolphins had more buoyant highlights than the Denver Broncos did points Sunday afternoon as Miami marked its 58th home opening day in franchise history with celebration, with an invigorating, hope-nourishing, surreal and record-shattering performance that left the Fins’ early season shining at 3-0.
Miami won, 70-20.
It isn’t a misprint. The Fins scored 12 more points than they have had seasons.
Tagovailoa threw a no-look shovel pass for a TD. The broke out a conga line TD celebration.
“I just go and hope there’s more than five guys behind me,” Tagovailoa said.
It was a fiesta.
Sunday broke the franchise record for points in a game, easily topping the 55 scored on Thanksgiving Day 1977 in St. Louis.
It was the most points scored by any team in the NFL since that same inaugural Dolphins year of 1966, when the Washington Redskins scored 72. Miami knelt at the end, eschewing a record-setting field goal try.
“I will be fine being second-guessed for that,” coach Mike McDaniel said.
Miami’s 727 total offensive yards were second all-time, to the 735 by the Los Angeles Rams in a game in 1951.
Do the Dolphins have your attention yet, NFL? How about you, America?
“It’s gonna tell a statement now,” as Mostert put it afterward. “A lot of teams are on notice. We’re not a team to be messed with. We’re that team.”
This team has now scored 130 points in three games, and collected more than 1,600 yards of offense. Tagovailoa has 1,024 passing yards.
Said McDaniel: “We have a lot of players executing a lot of things to a standard that’s unrelenting. We have all the right people to do some pretty cool things on a football field. Shame on us if we put a ceiling on what we’re capable of.”
With all that, the Dolphins won more than a game Sunday.
They have overcome the built-up scars of cynicism to also win the soaring hope and optimism of their starving fans.
They still have not won as convincingly the faith they actually are Super Bowl contenders. Not quite. Not yet.
That might come fast, though ... in one week, to be exact
They play AFC East team-to-beat Buffalo, up there, next Sunday in an early litmus test game. Trips to face two other league powers — at Philadelphia, then vs. champion Kansas City in Germany — are upcoming, too.
The real tests are about to begin.
For now, though? Oh my.
Did Sunday really happen?
As colleague Ethan Skolnick said to me in the pressbox Sunday, accurately, “After putting up with Dave Wannstedt offenses all those years, we deserve this.”
Indeed, a punt is no longer OK around here and a field goal is no longer parade worthy. The constipated offenses of much of the past 20-plus years have been replaced by fireworks, bombs bursting in air, potent balance and creativity.
The old Dolphins offense has been replaced by one of unmatched speed, led by Hill, Jaylen Waddle, Mostert and now Achane. This is an offense of daring, and led by a quarterback, in Tagovailoa , who has shed the early career doubts on him like Clark Kent peeling off his suit in a phone booth and coming out Superman.
Tagovailoa completed 23 of 26 passes for 309 yards and four TDs, his day done one play into the fourth quarter, after which backup Mike White played. (Tagovailoa is now 11-1 against Super Bowl-winning coaches after this win over Sean Payton.)
Miami is now 9-1 all-time at home vs. Denver and has opened 3-0 in consecutive seasons for the first time since three in a row from 1994 to 1996.
Hard to fathom this was the 58th home opener for South Florida’s flagship sports franchise.
At the very first, on September 2, 1966, a young man right out of Coral Gables High named Joe Auer returned the opening kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown — the first TD in clubs annals, a forever distinction.
Auer would pass away at age 77 in 2019. He joked late in his life that more people had told him they were at that first game than were actually there. The attendance was 26,276.
One who was there, with his father (I swear) was the young boy who grew up to write this now.
In the first wave of fans raised by this club, later as a journalist, I have followed the Fins intently from the expansion era through the glory days of Don Shula through the Dan Marino era through the lean seasons that followed. I have seen, lived, every shade of exhilaration for this club and disappointment in it.
Sunday, then, felt like medicine. A prescription Dolfans have been longing for.
They were doing the wave in the fourth quarter.
They were singing that hokey old fight song with unusual gusto.
Getting a bit giddy-greedy, even at 70-20, merrily the fans were chanting, “Let’s go Dolphins!”
And standing.
They were witnessing history.
